Podcast: Play in new window
This week, David returns to several of the unanswered questions submitted during our June 17 webinar, covering inflation, the dollar, gold, and how investors should think about positioning in a changing market. They also examine the massive debt burden building beneath the AI boom as Tesla falls 30% from its May peak and Google drops 20%. John Paulson believes gold is still in the early stages of a long bull market, but what could keep that momentum going? Finally, with Kevin Warsh facing a difficult set of choices, what can the Fed realistically do from here? Thanks for listening.
To watch the full webinar recording click here
- Tesla Down 30% From May Peak, Google Down 20%
- John Paulson Last Week Claims Gold Is Still In “Early Stages Of A Long Bull Market”
- What Is Kevin Warsh To Do?
“The average for all family offices globally now sits between 1 and 2%. That suggests that some family offices are already at a 5 to 15% allocation, while the vast majority, 72%, are at zero. At zero.
“So you have this setup where, yes, central banks are buying, and sure, there’s a few contrarian investors, and yes, we had some momentum traders in the fourth quarter of last year whose hands got slapped as the price reversed. And ultra-high-net-worth families, they’re underweight gold today.
“That’s very interesting considering you’ve got a bond market that is challenged by inflation, challenged by oversupply. Do you think the underweight remains over the next 10 to 15 years?” —David McAlvany
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Kevin: Welcome to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick, along with David McAlvany.
Well, Table 30 happened again last night, but this time your eldest son was with us. I love the fact that you’re halfway through The Odyssey right now, and he’s looking at you and going, “Dad, you’ve never read this? How about The Iliad? How about The Aeneid?” And it’s cool to listen to your son who’s in college right now asking his dad to catch up.
David: Yeah. There are many, many ways in which he is better read than I am—
Kevin: Isn’t that amazing?
David: —with respect to Greek literature, for sure. Maybe not Greek philosophy, but certainly he’s got me beat on—
Kevin: And maybe not the History of Interest Rates yet.
David: And I’m very interested in going to see the movie, but won’t do it until I finish the book.
Kevin: Yeah. Amazing. I haven’t seen the movie, but I talked to my daughter, and over a million feet of IMAX film was used. So, you’ll like the saying, Jurassic Park, spared no expense, I guess, huh?
David: Yeah. Well, and I love the director. He’s done some amazing stuff through the years.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: So Table 30 last night, a little bit different. A guest appearance. Nice to have him there. And it was really fun for me because basically it was the two of you having a conversation. I took notes and—
Kevin: You took good notes though.
David: It was great.
Kevin: I saw the notes, and it’s like, gosh, you don’t miss a beat. That’s an amazing thing. And that movie you were talking about that Chris Nolan made was Memento that you first showed me. And it has to do with remembering things, Dave. And it makes me think about even today’s commentary.
Memento is about a man who has lost his ability to have long-term memory. So he has to somehow remind himself of the long-term types of things because he can only remember, I think, about five minutes worth of material. So he’ll even tattoo things on his body that he knows he has to remember. And isn’t life like that?
David: Wall Street should take a note from that.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: And perhaps start tattooing themselves because the memory on the street is pretty short, and the mistakes that are remade over and over again, pretty consistent.
Kevin: You know a tattoo that I need to— I’m in my 40th year here in the precious metals world with the McAlvany family. But one of the tattoos I haven’t put on yet, but I need to, that says buy in July. Okay? July has always been, June and July have always been a good thing to remember, but isn’t it amazing how quickly we forget?
David: June and July. But we talked about this a few weeks ago. We could also have no leverage.
Kevin: No leverage.
David: No leverage. That’s the kiss of death for any asset class. And that’s one of the things that we see materializing in the equity markets today is the spots that have received the most attention. Part of it was organic buying. Part of it was leveraged buying.
Kevin: Right.
David: And when things turn, the downside is much more rapid when leverage has played a part in the ascent. So the descent is equal, usually proportional to the ascent. And I don’t think there’s many investors who are really clued into that. Maybe they don’t remember what happens to technology shares when they move to the other side of the cycle.
Kevin: Well, and you’re already seeing signs, possibly, of bear market confirmation on that. So for today?
David: Yeah, I think we’ll do two things. Return to and complete the Q&A from the session that our wealth management team sponsored and we shared in part last week. And secondly, let’s have a few market comments as well. So maybe we start with the markets and then move to the Q&A.
Kevin: Okay. So let’s go to the tattoo. Are we in a long-term bull market in gold right now?
David: Well, it’s one of those things that if you look at current consensus, the answer is no. If you look at some of the smartest people in the room, they would say, “Yes, because nothing fundamentally has changed.”
John Paulson was on CNBC last week. “We are only in the early stages of a long-term bull market for gold.” That was his quote from last week. Paulson turned bullish on gold in 2009 when he looked at the monetary and fiscal policy options available to the economic managerial class.
And currency devaluations would become a feature, in his view. Not a bug, but a feature. And his primary shift from then to now has been to convert his large bullion position to a focus on the operating leverage and the growth of companies that have massive in-ground reserves.
Which if you looked and said, “Okay, John, when you describe a long-term bull market, what do you have in mind?” He’s talking about companies that are not in production today. They just have in-ground resources. This is a long game for him, very long, and obviously more speculative—that play is—than just on gold bullion.
Kevin: Well, and he made a shift back in 2009. I mean, how much is gold up? He says that we’re still in—
David: The early stages.
Kevin: —the early stages, yet we’re up what, three or fourfold since 2009?
David: Yeah. And the years that have followed, price of bullion is up about fourfold. And the range of options for that managerial class remain as limited now as they were then.
So you have devaluation, you have financial repression, you have market intervention, market manipulation, maybe the same thing. All still point to costs that we, as the general public, bear for policies which in and of themselves do not resolve.
They do not cure the structural ailments in the global economy or the structural issues which are emergent in that 2008, 2009 time frame. So the biggest issue for countries, as for corporations, is layering on too much debt. No surprise there.
If we can manage GDP growth to levels higher than our debt service, there is actually a rationale for indebtedness. That’s the key, though, is you have to have GDP growth in excess of your debt service. But sometimes economic growth falls behind the debt service costs. And that sets up for a very, well, it’s just no longer sustainable.
That strategy is no longer sustainable. The burden is too great to bear, and corporates and sovereigns can restructure or they can default.
Kevin: So the two Ds, you either default or you devalue. And unfortunately, in both, the public loses, especially the currency owner.
David: Yeah. And when I say restructure or default, you’re right, inflation or devaluation is really just a subtle form of default. It’s a non-official— They haven’t made the proclamation. There’s no signed documents saying we’re in official default.
Devaluation is a unique expression of debt restructuring, and it is available only to sovereigns, where payment can still be made. You just run the printing presses. But the creditor is receiving less than originally agreed.
So because the currency units are worth less, and again, this ties back to the Paulson thesis, rests on both the currency degradation through time, as well as the implications of creditors reaching a pain tolerance. I think that pain tolerance is being tested now.
Kevin: Yeah. And pain tolerance can be measured. I joke with you so often about your interest in interest rates, but it’s important because that’s the cost of money. And that’s what you’re saying right now.
You can only play inflation games so long before interest rates are so far different from keeping up with the devaluation of the currency that the bond market revolts.
David: Yeah. The bond market has to be satisfied with their income stream. Has to be satisfied relative to inflation. And so are we bringing in enough to justify having lent the money out? Or the bond market, it’s not the monetary authorities, but the bond market will drive interest rates higher.
So who controls interest rates? It’s an interesting discussion point this week with Warsh making an announcement this Wednesday, and prospects of a rate increase have grown to 40%. And by the September meeting, 100% probability of a rate increase.
Kevin: Isn’t that amazing? Because earlier in the year, everybody was talking about decreases in interest rates, which, at this point— And never once did you say that we were, long-term, going to see lower interest rates. We knew with the inflation rate, the devaluation, the debt, that they have to go higher.
David: Now, if you look at the short end of the curve, of course they can go lower if that’s the Fed deciding that they want to accommodate the Treasury in terms of lowering the interest expense. Or if you look at the Fed trying to control that part of the yield curve which they can control, that would be at the short end of the curve.
But again, what they do for political purposes, what they do as an expression of economic management to make sure that financial conditions are as loose as possible to promote economic growth, it’s different as you go farther out on the curve.
That’s where, if you check in with the likes of PIMCO and the folks at DoubleLine Capital, there is a suspicion of an aggressively steepening yield curve—and that is a bear market in long bonds. Also, some interest at this point in TIPS. Why an interest in TIPS if inflation is already in the rear view mirror?
Kevin: And those are Treasury—
David: Treasury Inflation Protection Securities. The biggest bond managers on the planet have a concern about supply, too many IOUs, and have a concern about inflation, which is a natural pressure point on rates to go higher.
So, I mean, it was just Q1 where the probabilities were for rate cuts, not hikes, and that has shifted dramatically. And now central banks will either follow suit or be left with the risk of a greater migration out of bonds.
So I think what we have this week is an opportunity for saving credibility. I don’t know that we can avoid a crisis in the bond market, but we can at least forestall it.
It’s an interesting juxtaposition because to raise rates is to tighten financial conditions, which may be the final straw, if you will, on the camel’s back in terms of overvaluation in the equity markets and something that could create a cascade effect within equities.
But you have to maintain credibility. Kevin Warsh comes in and says, “This is my focus. This is my focus. This is my focus.” To ignore inflation at above the current target, he’s got a credibility issue. And, of course, Trump is already pounding the table. “Lower rates, lower rates, lower rates, lower rates.”
Kevin: Right.
David: Which again sets up for this credibility issue. Is this a pied piper scenario where Warsh gets in line behind Trump? Or even if it’s a small flex, a 25 basis point flex, does he need to communicate to the market that yes, he’s serious about inflation? And no, there is not capture to the White House and the Oval Office.
Kevin: Well, but the deficit-to-GDP is going to force the issue one way or another, right?
David: Yeah, for sure. Our deficit-to-GDP is the highest in the developed world, 7.8%. And not far behind us you’ve got the French, you’ve got the Brits. And then further down the list, Germany, maybe I have that in reverse, maybe Germany is a little bit higher.
But across Europe, it’s similar in terms of deficit spending. You’re supposed to reserve deficit spending for those critical moments where the consumer is unable to contribute to economic growth. Where the consumer is concerned, retrenching, tightening the belt, and not showing up.
When the economy slips towards recession, Keynesian economics, Neo-Keynesian economics would suggest that’s when you deficit spend. We’ve chosen to deficit spend in a period of time where the consumer has fully showed up. And so we’re in this very precarious state.
We’re on track for 2.5 trillion dollars in deficit spending, and that’s not with a recession. If we have a recession, we could see that blow out to 3.5, 4 trillion for 2026.
Kevin: So he’s not lone-rangering at this, though. Kevin is basically saying, “This is a problem right now. So let’s put together some think tanks.”
David: Yeah.
Kevin: He’s actually getting groups together, saying, “How do we solve this?”
David: Right. So I think he is doing a good job in managing the scenario carefully. He’s doing it in a new and unconventional way. They are like many think tanks, five of them.
And that’s to combine academic insight, real economic experience, and financial market prowess, which he hopes will provide the necessary insights and options to navigate a very difficult backdrop. One of those committees does have one of our former Weekly Commentary guests.
Kevin: Really?
David: Yeah. William White.
Kevin: William White’s on there.
David: William White is on there, which I mean, I take as an encouragement. This is a guy who understands inflation. He spent years at the Bank of Canada before he was with the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. And he brings market experience. He also brings some academic insight. He’s kind of a blend.
Kevin: Well, and how many decades of experience?
David: And tends to be hyper-focused on inflationism. So at least in the room, in the conversation, is someone I think who can bring a balance to other perspectives.
So for each Fed decision, there will be a series of market reactions, and we don’t know what those will be. But in the short term, those market reactions will seem important.
But I think the question will remain, is that singular decision—maybe it’s this week, maybe it’s in September—is it a short-term palliative or is it a cure?
And when you’re dealing with this debt disease, my tendency is to think that there’s nothing available to them but palliatives. I would love to be surprised.
Kevin: Well, and when you first said “nothing,” I was thinking you were going to say “nothing new under the sun.” Because really, there are many ways of saying just about the same thing.
You either raise interest rates or you lower interest rates. And if you don’t raise interest rates enough to keep up with the devaluation of the currency, you can play yield curve control games. You can do all this, but really the bottom line is, you have to pay enough interest to pay for the debt. That’s it.
David: Yeah. I mean, interest on the national debt has breached stability thresholds, and the Treasury has continued “I’ll have to figure this out at some point,” but they’ve continued to jam most of their new borrowing and refinancing to the short end of the curve—the only place that policy matters for interest rates, at the short end of the curve.
And maybe it’s not a complicated question. Maybe it’s just that that suggests a higher probability for yield curve control very soon, which, as we mentioned earlier, is an expression of financial repression. You choose winners and losers. Savers at commercial banks, investors sitting in money market funds are going to be forced to accept low to negative real yields, and there’s winners and losers. In this case, the sovereign wins because they reduce their interest cost, and savers in households lose because they have a diminishment in real income.
Kevin: Yeah. Well, in my lifetime, Dave, and in yours, we have really not seen the dollar, one year to the next, buy more. Okay. We haven’t really experienced deflation. So Paulson must be right when he’s talking about a long-term bull market.
He’s seeing this at this point, $40 trillion in debt, and he’s realizing we’re going to have to finance it somehow. Again, it’s nothing new under the sun. So Paulson, what did he say? “We’re in the beginning stages?
David: Yeah, this is the early stages of a long-term bull market. I guess the other way of saying that might be, if you were focused just on the dollar aspect, we’re in the early stages of a dollar bear market. In a dollar bear market, you can have periods of respite where actually the dollar moves higher and gains ground relative to other fiat currencies.
Kevin: Other currencies, but not buying things.
David: To some degree, you’re saying the same thing. We’re in a dollar bear market, we’re in a gold bull market. To the degree that the dollar’s devaluing, it’s going to show up in the cost of real things. And so maybe we’re in a milk bull market and an egg bull market. Expect to see higher prices.
Kevin: Unfortunately.
David: Yeah. Starbucks coffee. I’m making these adjustments, just having traveled cross country, and it’s not every day that I eat at McDonald’s, but when you’re on the fly and need to travel 20 plus hours in a day, it works.
Kevin: Right.
David: You look at a Whopper and it feels like a Whopper. What we’re paying for, a simple—
Kevin: So Burger King, McDonald’s. Yeah.
David: Fast food is not cheap food anymore.
Kevin: And it’s not fast anymore either. It’s weird. It’s automated. It’s not fast. It’s expensive. Yet we still succumb to it.
David: So we believe Paulson’s right that gold is in a long-term bull market. Recent volatility in price reflects the glimmers of hope attached to policy shifts and the short-term overbought conditions in the gold and silver market from the fourth quarter last year and the first quarter this year—those overbought conditions being resolved.
The more thorough the correction in price, the greater the likelihood of Paulson’s view being correct that this is actually early stages, with the alternative being a final blow-off top. Did we just see a final blow-off top? Actually, a healthy correction resets the market psychology. And as we’ve talked about in past episodes, if you look at the constituents of buying, it tells you a lot about how much further you have to go. You run out of buyers, you run out of market upside. And looking at those, we have central banks certainly, they have and will continue to reconfigure their—
Kevin: They’ve been consistent buyers.
David: Yeah. And they reflect a desire for a stable and neutral asset base as they move to gold. Choosing gold as a diversifier. Investors remain largely indifferent to the metals, though the ranks of interested buyers are broadening with time.
Kevin: What would happen, however, if there was a major shift, like a crisis of some form? Even like what we may be seeing in semiconductors right now. If that continues, how many crisis moments do we need to have before gold really pops?
David: Well, again, remember the enthusiasm in the stock market is largely tied to this AI narrative. And you can justify prices of any asset at higher levels if a revolution is afoot and it reconfigures everything. Productivity is different. The way we do life is different. The way we solve problems is different. The way we code is different—except the narrative may have run past the reality.
And in that sense, I think we’re one financial crisis away from those investor ranks within the gold market not only broadening, but deepening their exposure. There will come a day when the conventional wisdom is that investors should have a minimum of five to 15% allocation to gold amongst Wall Street firms, amongst bankers. And if you ask your financial advisor today how much gold they personally own, how much they recommend, what the ideal asset allocation model is, my guess is you will find only a few who talk about it in single-digit terms.
Kevin: I talked to a man who runs a trust who is looking at making an investment with us, and he’s very knowledgeable. Yet he said, “I literally know nothing about gold.” He said, “Start from the beginning. Tell me why we need to have this in the trust.” And think about that. A lot of these larger sophisticated investments, these trusts, these family offices, they don’t even have any.
David: Yeah. Well, I mean, Morgan Stanley has already planted their flag at 20% as an ideal allocation within an equity-bond mix. It’s a 20% diversifier, stabilizer, ballast asset within the mix, substituting or taking over for half of what would’ve been in bonds previously. It used to be 60/40. Now 60/20/20 with the fixed income position being cut in half. Yeah. I mean, the point is well-made. 72% of global family offices reported zero exposure to gold.
Kevin: That’s big sophisticated money.
David: That was the latest JP Morgan global family office report. The average for all family offices globally now sits between one and 2%. That suggests that some family offices are already at a five to 15% allocation while the vast majority—72%—are at zero. At zero. So you have this setup where, yes, central banks are buying, and sure there’s a few contrarian investors. And yes, we had some momentum traders in the fourth quarter of last year whose hands got slapped as the price reversed.
Kevin: Right.
David: And ultra-high net worth families, they’re underweight gold today. That’s very interesting considering you’ve got a bond market that is challenged by inflation, challenged by oversupply. Do you think the underweight remains over the next 10 to 15 years?
Kevin: Well, for survival purposes, no.
David: Nope.
Kevin: How do you survive if you remain underweight when that’s your counterbalance?
David: Yeah. Well, these are more sophisticated, deep pocketed investors that, to be honest, if you say, “Well, why have they not paid attention to gold?” I think they’re busy managing lifestyle concerns. It’s a different set of questions when you’re thinking about having one versus two pilots, when you’re thinking about the size of the plane, and maybe you downscale and you’re not a C-5 guy. But it’s a different set of concerns. And I think lifestyle concerns, they haven’t been bothered yet to consider a shift in investment mandate. Because frankly, what has given them their wealth, it’s worked to this point.
Kevin: Right.
David: It’s worked to this point.
Kevin: Well, and then there are narratives that are still working also. Like you said, the AI narrative, the tech narrative. It’s still working right now. So why bother looking at something new?
David: Unless it’s not working anymore. And we don’t know until a mini correction of 15, 20, 30% becomes a massive hemorrhaging. And so you don’t see a lot of people hitting the exits at this point, even though we’ve had a significant price correction in semiconductors and the AI related stocks.
But as I said, we’re one crisis away from a wave of investment capital pouring into precious metals. And I bring up the bond market to point out where safe haven capital typically flows. That worked in the period of time from 1982 to 2022. If you get flummoxed in the stock market, where do you go? Fixed income.
But when rates are coming down from double-digit to zero, of course you have an accommodation. You have a market which is a great place to go—out of stock risk, equity risk, into bonds, which actually have some appreciation potential as long as that long-term structural shift in borrowing costs is moving lower. But today, moving from stocks to bonds is more akin from moving from the frying pan to the fire.
Kevin: Yeah. Well, and you brought up safe haven buying. Okay. And that would be bonds in the past. And you said Morgan Stanley has already shifted and they said, “All right, from a 60/40 portfolio, we’re going to go to a 60/20/20,” 20% being gold. Price action, we talk so often about price action as being a motivator for people to buy, but safe haven buying isn’t price action oriented, is it? It’s different.
David: It’s different. Yeah, it is different. I think what we will have in the back half of 2026 and 2027 is investors who are considering gold and silver for the first time. 2025, the metals price action put the asset class on the investor screen of outperforming assets. By 2027, it won’t be outperformance that has precious metals on the radar, but financial market disruption across asset classes.
And this is where, again, if you’re thinking about the merits of diversification, you have to look at one aspect that gold provides that’s unique. Gold lowers correlation in good times. It has a lower correlation relative to other assets in good times. In periods of crisis, that changes. It goes from low correlation to negative correlation in bad times, which, again, will be seen as a cure for portfolios which are trading with too high a correlation and insufficient volatility adjustment.
Kevin: So let’s talk about—because often we’re asked about paper gold, like an ETF, versus actual physical gold— So what does that look like going forward?
David: In terms of the gold and silver ETFs, I still think they’re a valid expression of investing. Buy today, sell tomorrow, take a gain. I would tend to see the ETFs through a slightly different lens than the physical metals, where you don’t have any counterparty risks.
Kevin: Right.
David: And people don’t think about counterparty risks until the day that they have to think about counterparty risks. And on that day, it’s too late. So to me, you have to have some degree of paranoia to consider physical metals over the ETF versions of them. The ETF versions are fine as a trading vehicle. They’re inferior as an insurance play.
Kevin: Well, we talked about price action versus safe haven buying, right? So price action’s going to be an ETF.
David: Sure. We’ll see investor capital flow there, but also to physical metals. I think— Coming back to this issue of cross-market correlation and insufficient volatility adjustment, asset managers do this routinely. Hedge fund managers do it all the time. Individual investors very rarely are looking at how the constituent parts in a portfolio can, under different periods, become more and more correlated. We saw that in 2022, where all of a sudden bonds and stocks are trading in line with each other, and bonds were supposed to be an offset to losses in equities. And in fact, you’re losing on both sides. That should have been a wake-up call to individual investors. And yet I don’t think the lessons were learned. And ETFs have become the rage. And we’re talking about equity market ETFs. ETF investors don’t adjust for real time volatility or increased cross market correlations.
That is where you have an edge. As an institutional investor, as a high net worth investor, there is more interest in adapting the portfolio, in part because you’ve got folks that are paying attention to correlation and volatility. I’m thinking particularly high net worth investors allocating capital to hedge funds, where, if you’re not adjusting for volatility, if you’re not paying attention to correlation, you can get crushed.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. Right.
David: And there is actually somebody at the helm, there is somebody making decisions. In contrast to the autopilot version, which retail investors have adopted lock, stock, and barrel, what do they want? They want the cheapest product possible. Buy an ETF portfolio, buy the indices, buy a little bit of the S&P, buy the Dow, buy the QQQs, and you get broad diversification. But what you get with that broad diversification is, again, under periods of stress, no correction, no adaptation, if you will, for an increase in correlation. But I think what the market will discover is that this is one of the key merits of having gold in a portfolio and having it not at one, two percent allocation, but perhaps as much as Morgan Stanley suggests, 20%. Why?
Because you want something that’s not only not correlated, but actually moves to a negative correlation under stress, which gives you an upside benefit offsetting losses elsewhere in your portfolio. People don’t appreciate how important gold is, not just in a raw sense as a diversifier, but it’s a critical, critical role.
Kevin: So the Main Street investor’s going to be late to the game. How about the high net worth individual? You said it was what, 72% of the family offices don’t even have gold right now?
David: Yeah. The asset class remains under-owned.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: 72% of high net worth family offices, 0% in gold. Need we say more?
Kevin: Right.
David: That’s a lot of zeros.
Kevin: Right.
David: But over the next three to five to seven years, we expect the opposite to become the case. Not only high net-worth individuals, family offices, adopting a new model, but retail investors coming late to the game and charging the price even higher as they jump on the bandwagon. Better late than never. $4,000 gold, $55 silver, $60 silver, in the mid 50s, say, will be considered an exceptional cost basis in the years ahead.
Kevin: Well, in the conversation I’ve had to have with myself and my clients, I’m living through something, Dave, after 40 years of doing this, that is a new element. There’s a monetary regime change going on right now. So whereas the dollar was the petrodollar, 100% of oil being traded. At this point, what is it? About 80% of the oil’s now being traded in dollars. Any of these other currencies that are buying that oil are being converted to gold. And so this monetary regime change, you’ve got a gold standard silently reasserting itself.
David: Absolutely.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: Absolutely. When I say $4,000 gold is an exceptional cost basis, of course it can go lower in price. And we may get it this week with a surprise 50 basis point rate increase. Certainly it would take something like that to really put gold on its keister. But the risk there for Warsh is that he could also tank the stock market with a surprise on the upside. So it’s either nothing or 25 basis points. Maybe we can test the lows.
Kevin: If he does that, if he surprises the market, I’m buying.
David: But remember, August and September are the strongest months of the year. Why? Because you’ve got 1.4 billion people who are interested in gold for cultural reasons. And that doesn’t change regardless of price.
Kevin: Indian wedding season.
David: Indian wedding season.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: So last week we revisited several of the big picture, more structural, drivers for the precious metals and for the hard assets—that theme in general. If you can get the economic regime right and identify the factors driving market prices, you can develop a thesis, and in a disciplined manner build out a portfolio to capture the price changes driven by that economic regime. So you’ll find a lot of the language from last week’s conversation about a new regime, about a shift in our trade settlement system. And these are very important drivers.
Kevin: Yeah. Well, speaking of last week, Dave, what a difference a week makes. There’ve been some losses in some of the darlings of the market.
David: Yeah, major breaks. Major breaks in very popular names. Tesla lost 17% last week. The commentators are relatively quiet about what for many other assets would be considered hemorrhaging.
Kevin: Right.
David: Tesla lost 17% last week. The Mag 7, off 8.6 over seven sessions. Meta gave up 7.9% last week. Alphabet down 7.8% last week. Amazon off 6% last week. If you look at Tesla off of their recent highs, Tesla’s now 30% below its May peak. Microsoft is 18% down from its June peak. Google’s 20% below its May high watermarks. Oracle was off 9% last week, which puts it now down over 50% since June 1.
Kevin: Do you think debt plays a role in this?
David: Absolutely. Oracle is one of the chief offenders in terms of technology companies with too much debt, and it shows up in the price. But as we said many weeks ago, when these hyperscalers start taking on debt, the clock is now ticking. You’ve changed the expectations of investors who would, just as an equity investor, be focused, when you’re looking at a strong balance sheet, on the revolutionary upside of the technology shift. As soon as you introduce debt into the equation, you now have a, “when will this pay for itself?” Because we do have an interest component which has begun—
Kevin: It’s like a lighting a fuse.
David: Right. Or starting a clock. It’s like a shot clock.
Kevin: You got to get it done.
David: Limited time to make the points.
Kevin: A shot clock, that is a great way of putting it.
David: Limited time to make the points. If we don’t make the points, we lose the game. You’re now on a shot clock. Get it done. And if you don’t, hell to pay. So, yeah, Oracle off 50% since June 1. Interestingly, corporate debt is now coming under pressure, particularly in software, AI, and the hyperscalers. The shift higher in corporate bond yields last week was significant. And it was right in step with sovereign yields also on the increase.
Those are things that, from last week, you should be paying attention to. You can worry less about equity volatility when bonds are behaving normally. Increased volatility in corporate debt is a big deal. Last week the sovereigns were under pressure along with the corporates. Global treasury yields reached their highest levels—and again, this is global treasury yields, Bloomberg has an aggregate sovereign index—highest level since 2008 last week.
Bund yields, 15-year highs, Japanese debt, 25-year highs last week. And again, we’re talking about the yield, not the price. French yields, UK yields—I mean, across the developed economies yields were rising, and the emerging markets were no exception. We had uniform volatility in the debt markets. That makes me wonder if there is an unwind of the carry trade. Bloomberg commented on the evidence for basis trade unwinding last week. So we’ve got carry-trade dynamics, potentially. Basis trade dynamics also potentially unwinding.
Kevin: And so you’re talking about the yen when you’re talking about the carry-trade?
David: Yeah. The yen is breaking down close to 165:1 compared to the US dollar, levels we haven’t seen in 40 years. It’s flirting with that 165 level. As we said a few weeks ago, you break 163 and you’re in danger territory. You have to have an intervention. You have to have the Bank of Japan intervene, or it can accelerate to the downside very quickly. So will they raise rates? Likely they will raise rates. With a debt-to-GDP of 200%, they raise rates, and it’s punishing to their fiscal position.
So the momentum-traded stocks, which have been so popular with retail investors, whether it’s South Korea, here in the United States, or foreign capital coming to invest in the US hyperscalers, the momentum-traded stocks are getting slammed. And we can reasonably assume that the margin borrowing statistics are shifting as we speak. You recall we got to about 1.4, maybe it was 1.41, 1.42 trillion dollars in margin debt. The highest level—as a percentage of stock market capitalization, as a percentage of GDP, and in nominal terms—in history.
Kevin: And then it began to shrink a little bit.
David: Well, with selloff over the last 10 days, I think it’s safe to say the next time we get that statistic, it’s going to be lower, not higher. It’s the de-leveraging of the retail investor. How that deleveraging is contained will be the trick. Can it be contained?
If you look at charts, man, this is where it starts to get ugly. Technical indicators for the semiconductors have all triggered weekly sell signals after diving 25, 30% off peaks. Momentum is now on the downside. You’re going to have to do something to stop that. Interesting setup for Wednesday when Trump’s asking for a rate cut, and if you wanted to stabilize the stock market, you would cut rates or do nothing.
Kevin: Right. Yeah, but Kevin Warsh has got pressure on him to look like he’s the tough guy right now.
David: Right. The new sheriff in town. Who does he answer to? Does he answer to Trump or does he answer to the bond market?
Kevin: So 25 to 30% off peaks, Dave. I mean, if this were any other market, you’ve pointed this out, the commentators would be saying, “Gosh, that sounds like a bear market.”
David: I know, but we’re still in the AI revolution. The narrative is still there. Interestingly, JP Morgan Chief Jamie Dimon was in the news; “I wouldn’t touch long bonds. I can’t buy equities at these valuations.”
Kevin: That’s what he said?
David: Yeah. Can’t buy stocks today. Can’t buy long bonds today. People are underestimating global risks. No kidding. No kidding. But again, it’s like one hand doesn’t talk to the other. Jamie’s at the top, just like Mike Wilson is the chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley. And yet as the general, he says, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Kevin: 20% gold, but his brokers don’t buy into that.
David: Right. The corporals, the sergeants, the privates, everybody downstream is like, “Eh, we don’t know. We don’t fully agree.” There’s a disconnect between good thinking that’s happening at the top, hopefully risk mitigation that’s being addressed in terms of reserves and things like that for these commercial banks. Notice that we just got through an earning cycle, and this was the best ever in terms of trading revenue, equity trading revenue, on record. Now, every time that we’ve had a record equity trading period for banks, that was the end of the market. That was the end.
Kevin: Well, I wonder if that’s what Jamie Dimon is talking about. He’s saying the investors are underestimating the risk rate.
David: I would actually say that was the end of the upside. That was the end of the trend, the end of the move. I’m not talking about an extinction event. But when you’re trading profits reach peaks, guess what happens next?
Kevin: Maybe time to take a little profit yourself.
David: Yeah. If investors are underestimating risk in the global economy, ignoring overvaluation in equities, even after the recent corrections, and if they’re ignorant of the implications of higher interest rates for long bonds, if that’s the case, Kevin, I’d say gold at $4,000 is a no-brainer.
Kevin: Yeah. So what do you think, we answer a few of our investors’ questions right now?
David: Yeah.
Kevin: I’ll go ahead and start with the first one. “David, what are your thoughts on the validity of the CME gold and silver system? Is it truly designed for physical delivery, or does it fail to represent the true physical market?” What are your thoughts? Paper and delivery, CME?
David: The system’s stable and reliable. The CME system, it’s stable and reliable most of the time. Delivery is a feature. That’s to say not all of the time. Delivery is a feature. It’s an option available to those positioned in contracts, but it’s not frequently used relative to the volume of transactions which are settled in cash.
Kevin: Every once in a while when somebody does use it, people start to panic.
David: Yeah. Right. You’re taking too much. Game over, settle in cash. As the futures market has grown beyond mere hedging to a much higher degree, accommodating leveraged speculation, the usefulness as a derivative of the underlying metal, it’s actually made delivery even less important to traders. Traders aren’t there because they’re planning on taking delivery. A gold owner who wants to own physical doesn’t do it via the futures market.
Kevin: Yeah. So that’s not a substitute for physical.
David: But it’s also the kind of buyer in the futures market is a different buyer. They’re a speculator wanting to take a leveraged bet for a very short period of time before a contract expires. You’re hoping the price goes up more in a short period of time, and you’re leveraging yourself to take advantage of that. That’s just not your gold buyer. That is a directional bet on a commodity, could be any commodity, gold and silver. They could be buying it because of chart points.
Kevin: That’s why you bet on both directions. When you’re in that market, you’re not betting long or short. You’re just—
David: Long today, short tomorrow, it doesn’t matter, which is different than the mindset of a physical metals buyer. It does not really represent the physical market. For a look at the physical market, you have to study the over-the-counter market. And that’s where all of the physical metals are transacted on a wholesale basis, and then ultimately to a retail investor, but via your OTC dealers.
So there is an intersection between OTC inventories and the CME contract trading. And in recent years, the EFPs, or the exchange for physicals between the two has been very, very active. This also is not necessarily a delivery mechanism, the exchange for physical, but a conversion process from a futures contract to an actual physical inventory held by an OTC dealer.
There has been a lot of EFP transactions in the last 12 months, an overwhelming amount, which can indicate a lot of things, including stress on CME inventories, outsized volumes in London, many other things. But you are moving from contract to allocated physicals in the process. So CME volumes, we look at those, we look at commitment of trader reports. These are helpful indicators for measuring the psychology of the metals market for where hot money may be hitting a tipping point.
So from that standpoint, the validity of the CME gold and silver system, it is valid. You just have to ask, what is it for? And it’s really an expression of speculation. And for us, looking at the statistics related to CME and COT, again, gives us an idea of just how frenzied the market is becoming.
Kevin: Well, and we got a chance to see last October, not only October, but then in January, some stresses on that—the physical delivery. The metals were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
David: Right.
Kevin: That was one of the problems. Well, okay, so I’m going to move on to Peter’s question here. Peter says, “Do you have a view on global liquidity going forward, and its impact on the gold price?”
David: Yeah. Financial market liquidity—which is sometimes described as financial conditions, or financial market liquidity as a subset of financial conditions—has been incredibly loose. When conditions are loose, you have in the marketplace a strong appetite for risk taking. And traditional risk assets tend to do quite well. In that environment, you could argue that gold is not particularly relevant. People are interested in making money, not preserving value. And so as long as they’re interested in making money, there’s other places to go to do that.
Kevin: The greed/fear thing.
David: So the irony of 2025 is that we had this sort of speculative move higher in the equity markets, in risk assets, but it was the central bank demand which was carrying the day for gold up until probably late Q3, early Q4. And then all of a sudden you’ve got futures speculators and momentum traders piling into gold in a huge way. So interestingly, gold is usually the opposite of risk assets. In this case, it was moving in lockstep with risk assets. So that’s worth noting.
Gold as a low- to negative-correlated asset is generally sidelined when global liquidity is high. Then when that changes, as financial conditions tighten, as liquidity diminishes, gold performs its role as a negatively correlated asset. And as a safe haven, it tends to see more investor flows into it.
Now, when you think about interest rates, as interest rates rise and they get past critical thresholds, that does tighten credit. In essence, it tightens liquidity. In the market, that kind of dynamic, gold is generally positively impacted. Positively impacted. So a tightening of financial conditions can actually be very positive for gold. Also, as financial assets correct lower in the environment of tighter financial conditions, there is less capital available to be recycled through the banking system. So a correction in equities is both a cause and an effect of tightening liquidity. And in that case, the safe haven characteristics of gold are highly sought after.
Kevin: It’s interesting that you’d say that, Dave, but initially gold is so liquid that when things tighten, a lot of times gold will briefly go down because so many people need to tap into it.
David: But you can count that kind of correction in weeks.
Kevin: Yeah, that’s right. And then it reverses like it did in 2008.
David: Yeah. So another view on global liquidity is from the standpoint of money supply growth. When money supply reaches past thresholds and you could say, “Hey, we’ve just got too much money.” Kind of going back to the monetarist, too much money chasing too few goods. Instead of gold being uninteresting to investors focused on risk assets, investors can look at these sort of monetary thresholds and become concerned about inflation, and seek gold as an inflation hedge. So, all this to say, liquidity dynamics globally do impact demand for gold and thus its price, but there are variations on the theme to bear in mind.
Kevin: This next question, Dave, actually has something to do with liquidity, and has something to do with the physical item being in the right form at the right time. So I’m going to read this question because it’s a great question. The question is, “I’m seeing buy prices for silver about $14 back of spot. What is driving the large difference between spot price and the buyback prices of physical metals?”
David: Yeah. First, in the over-the-counter market, amongst physical metals dealers, just think about how a transaction happens. Somebody comes in off the street and wants to liquidate the asset. A dealer buys it, either takes it into inventory or sells it to an OTC dealer, a wholesaler. And so there’s capacity limits at both levels. There’s a limit as to how much inventory can be held. To increase those limits, inventory can be converted to exchange-deliverable formats. Send the product to a refiner, and you receive back large-format exchange-deliverable product. And the OTC dealer, in particular, can continue to buy back product and be a source of liquidity.
Kevin: But there’s an interest cost in the time that it takes to get that done. And that’s why we see these backups sometimes.
David: Well, it’s a couple of things. We’ve seen in recent quarters is a backup in refining capacity. When you can’t quickly convert odd products to an exchange deliverable format, or as a line, the refining line, it gets too long. Bids begin to reflect the time, that is the time value of money, as well as the hedging costs incurred through that time frame. So if the time frame becomes unknowable, bids get even softer.
So your liquidation prices are, in those cases, well below spot, reflecting a seizing up of the normal refining process where the OTC dealer can’t get enough product onto the exchange to re-liquefy and continue to be a source of liquidity to the market. So the bids drop.
Kevin: That’s like molasses. Everything slows down.
David: Yeah. So until refining capacity is increased or excess supplies decrease because demand is on the rise, the bids stay below spot. For the long-term investor, that’s an exceptional opportunity to buy below market prices. Obviously, if you’re a seller in that context, the market price is not what you want, but it’s all you’re going to get.
Kevin: So it strikes me, Dave, that it is good to try to time. If you are going to be doing some selling, don’t time it when everybody else is, at the same time. It’s better to have an exit strategy that is more, I don’t know, deliberate.
David: Yeah. Well, I’ll give you a case scenario. A client of ours called, and silver was at 109, and we began the process of moving bars to our account so they could be liquidated. And I think on a couple of his thousand-ounce bars, we ended up getting 113, 114 per ounce. The next week we’re at 120, and I called to get a bid because I was going to sell some of my own silver. And I called to get a bid and the bid was below 110. So there’s an $11 difference. I’m like, oh, I was actually offended.
Kevin: You thought it might blow over.
David: Well, yeah, it didn’t play out exactly as I planned. The point is, this client was wise enough to not worry about the top tick. He wasn’t concerned about getting— It was good enough. It didn’t have to be the very top. And I was closer to the very top, and didn’t get what I wanted. Actually, I would’ve gotten a price lower than his, even though spot was higher because the market dynamics were already shifting. I think it’s worth considering those dynamics when timing a liquidation. Waiting to get the last dollar in a dynamic up-move means you may not get the best dollar price if you get to a point where liquidity temporarily dries up. So be early and be good with it.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Next question. This one’s more of a longer-term question, Dave. “What evidence do you see for how gold and silver markets are likely to behave over the next 10 to 20 years?”
David: It’s a long time frame.
Kevin: That’s going to put you at about 72 years old. Yeah.
David: You had to say it. Thanks.
Kevin: Sorry.
David: What does that put you?
Kevin: Oh, that would put me a little above that. Yeah. Yeah.
David: Much of what we covered last week in the Commentary serves as the best evidence of a bull trend in the years ahead. I think 10 to 20 years is a long time frame. I could say with greater confidence three to five years with greater conviction. But this trade settlement system requiring a neutral asset like gold will be critical to extending those time frames.
This is a new source of demand beyond central banks, beyond investors. I think when you look at debt levels increasing globally from an already high level, a broadening base of investors, a normalization of allocating to metals, I think these all play a part as well. So to this last point, a gold allocation is still, if you’re talking to folks on Wall Street, it’s still a contrarian play.
Kevin: Right.
David: There’s no consensus around owning it, no consensus around increasing an allocation to it, no agreement with a model shift. Investor adoption of new allocation models, including hard assets, I think that’s going to take three to five years. 10 to 20, we’ll see. But there is a constraint to supply which can only be resolved via much higher prices. And so I think confidently over the next three to five years, and certainly if we’re talking about structural shifts in the arena of trade and trade settlement, maybe it stretches to 10 or 20 years. We’ll just take it one year at a time, one day at a time.
Kevin: Well, and again, we’re talking about price here, but there’s never been a generation that wouldn’t want to own gold for a portion of the portfolio. So we can talk 10, we can talk three to five, we can talk a hundred. It’s always good to have a portion in physical gold because of the devaluation of currency.
David: My dad’s 86 years old this year. And if you looked at his first birthday or his 86th birthday, you can count the years in between where gold was a losing asset. As you count the decades, there’s never been a losing decade.
Kevin: That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Wow. That’s a great thing to tell your kids. Wow, that’s really good. Okay. So next question from William. Dave, you mentioned the carry trade earlier in the commentary, but his question is, “Is a significant yen carry trade unwind expected in the near term with the Bank of Japan raising short-term interest rates to 1%? And if not, what critical signs would forewarn of an imminent yen carry trade unwind?”
David: Well, the unwind will show up in increased currency and interest rate volatility globally. We may be seeing that now.
Kevin: I was going to say, you said we’re seeing that, possibly.
David: Yeah. So I think the answer to the question simply is yes. And I think we’re gaining a body of evidence. If we have a continuation of what we had last week over the next several weeks, I think the verdict is in.
Kevin: Okay. “There is a popular Dollar Milkshake Theory by Brent Johnson. Do you agree that the US has levers that will always keep it on top, such as US stablecoins?”
David: Yeah. To say always would be to ignore the history of earlier reserve currencies that have lost that status. So maybe take that word out. And I think there’s a lot of validity to the Dollar Milkshake Theory. The theory is correct that the most liquid markets see a lot of traffic, a lot of demand in the context of market stress. And so if the milkshake is extra thick, you need a bigger straw to suck it out or to move things. That’s basically the theory. And so where’s the widest straw? Where’s the biggest straw? It’s like if you go to Dairy Queen and they give you a straw that looks like a pipe.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: Well, that’s it.
Kevin: Okay.
David: So I think the theory is correct. Dollar demand can increase considerably in the short term, even if the intermediate and long-term destination is lower.
Kevin: So he mentioned stablecoins. What are your thoughts on that? How does that affect Treasuries?
David: In the short run, US stablecoins are positive for Treasuries as a source of demand, positive for the dollar on the surface. But I think ultimately they add volatility in a negative sense to both. And a part of that is we don’t know how stablecoins trade in a down market and who the buyer of last resort would be for stablecoins or the Treasuries that they hold. Current stablecoin issuers are also interested in gold, which has been and will be a net positive for the gold market, but there, too, could contribute to fits of downside volatility. We just don’t know the buying and selling patterns. There’s not enough history.
Kevin: But you don’t see stablecoins replacing the dollar?
David: No, I think stablecoins, similar to central bank digital currencies, are not likely to be a replacement for the dollar. At the economics conference I was at West Palm Beach last week, there was a gal who has had a storied career in commercial banking and worked for one of the top three firms in the world, was actually in line to be the CEO of the entire global organization. And this was a point that she made, so I just want to give her credit, commercial banks lose their role in the intermediation process whereby they create new money via lending. So central bank digital currencies basically cut out the role of commercial banks in the creation of money. Stablecoins, you could argue, do the same thing. So this sort of transformation of the financial markets will not occur without a fight from the commercial banks who would essentially lose their role in that disintermediation process.
Kevin: They’re no longer necessary.
David: Yeah. The role of commercial banks would have to be radically changed for a broader adoption of central bank digital currencies or stablecoins. I know that wasn’t exactly the question, but that’s a political constraint as much as a structural or functional constraint.
Kevin: I’m sure they have a loud voice. I’m sure the banks have a very loud voice. Next question. “How do you think the US government is likely to address the national debt, and could that lead to a bond market crisis?” That’s a big question. Ask Kevin Warsh.
David: The government is not likely to address it in ways that truly address it.
Kevin: Right.
David: Because they risk the ire of the voter. I think they can pretend to fight inflation and let both the economy and inflation run hot. That is, I think, the course that we’re on. They could move the inflation target, create an academic justification for 2% being low and 3% being more appropriate. They could, again, pretend to fight inflation while allowing it to run above target. That is an effective way of dealing with debt, certainly above the economic growth rate.
In essence, inflation is one way to address the national debt crisis. Inflation has always been a policy choice, and so is financial repression. Choosing where capital flows or who has access to it and on what terms. Yield curve control, certainly for the short end of the curve, but a steepening of the curve is really a bond market vote, a mini crisis of credibility with the Fed and the Treasury.
So a very steep yield curve is just that. And I think we are on the cusp of a bond market crisis. So will they deal with it? Not likely to address it in ways that truly address it. So it’s a different version of papering over the problem.
Kevin: Well, all right, next question. “How could the rise of China, India, and the East more broadly affect US reserve currency dominance?” And let me just add to that question from my point of view, isn’t that possibly what the Trump administration and Scott Bessent and these guys sort of want anyway? We’ve talked about Triffin’s dilemma, right?
David: Yeah.
Kevin: Do we want to see the dominance of the dollar fade so that our ability to be competitive making things here in the United States— So I’m changing the question a little bit, but go for it.
David: Well, every policy choice has trade-offs. And what we’ve come up against is some of the disadvantages of dollar hegemony. It’s a system that is functional, but also dysfunctional. If you think about families that have significant issues, they can function in a fairly normal way and yet under the surface have extreme levels of dysfunction within them. And our dollar-based system post Bretton Woods is a highly dysfunctional system, but the logistics do work. What they’re talking about doing is trading the trade-offs, or changing the trade-offs, and accepting a lower currency value, increasing the produced goods, the manufactured goods in the United States, distributing those goods globally. It is a priority.
The rise of China, India, and the East more broadly, how does it affect reserve currency dominance? I think we’re in the process of wanting to hand the baton off, to a degree. We don’t want to lose the status, but we also want to ditch some of the constraints that are introduced by it. And so how they navigate that is going to be a bit tricky because, again, we don’t want to lose the status because it does confer some benefits. But we’re also dealing with some of the costs that have accrued over time.
Kevin: It’s gotten expensive, yeah.
David: Yeah. So erosion of the post-Bretton Woods system, further bolstering of a system of trade settlement, a system that sidesteps the dollar system. This is what the Chinese, the Indians, many of the global South, as they like to call them, they’re already doing it. And we already see a diminished interest in Treasuries as Treasury recycling is being replaced by something else—what Jeff Currie and his thesis, what he described as gold recycling.
Kevin: And he’s been right so far.
David: Yeah.
Kevin: I mean, his thesis is proving itself out. Next question. And I wonder, Dave, if we should hold more questions for next week’s show. Maybe make this the last question this week. What are your thoughts?
David: Oh, shucks.
Kevin: We could go on and on, but our listeners have things to do.
David: That’s right.
Kevin: Things to get to. So I’ll ask this last question, yeah.
David: But what about Joe Rogan? He goes for three hours.
Kevin: I know. What about Joe Rogan? Do you listen to Joe Rogan every day, Dave?
David: No.
Kevin: You don’t have time.
David: No. Well, somebody has time.
Kevin: I’m sure somebody—
David: Would you listen to this for three hours?
Kevin: Yeah, sorry.
David: No. Okay. Yes, we’ll extend next week.
Kevin: All right, last question, and then closing thoughts. “If money printing continues, can the stock market keep rising? And at what point do valuations or earnings multiples become unsustainable?”
David: The answer to the first question is yes. It has been until recently. Valuations and earnings multiples are already unsustainable. Of course, the argument would be, “but you don’t understand the revolutionary nature of AI and—”
Kevin: Right. This time it’s different.
David: Yeah.
Kevin: It always is.
David: What that argument suggests is that mean reversion is no longer the first rule of investing.
Kevin: Right.
David: Except that that is the first rule of investing. And if you ignore it, you ignore it at your peril. Mean reversion is the first rule of investing. When you get to valuations that on a bell curve are three standard deviations, between two and a half and three standard deviations, you’ve accounted for between 99 and 99.97% of all history. And to say that we can get more expensive valuation— Okay, they can. Theoretically, statistically they can, but you’re talking about not the one in a hundred year, one in a thousand. It’s more like the one in 10,000 year event.
Kevin: So what does your tattoo say? Okay. The thing that your long-term memory—
David: No leverage.
Kevin: No leverage. That’s right.
David: But maybe we should also have tattooed, “You can count on mean reversion.”
Kevin: You can.
David: Yes.
Kevin: That’s right.
David: So we are going to get it at some point, and we may have already started it.
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Thank you for the questions that you have sent in in various forms, and we will continue to answer next week. You’ve been listening to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick, along with David McAlvany. You can find us at McAlvany.com and you can call us at 800-525-9556.
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This has been the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. The views expressed should not be considered to be a solicitation or a recommendation for your investment portfolio. You should consult a professional financial advisor to assess your suitability for risk and investment. Join us again next week for a new edition of the McAlvany Weekly Commentary.















